British Pat. No. 1 335 842 in the name of Joseph Lucas (Industries) Limited describes a method of manufacturing sheets of fiber-reinforced silicon nitride. In that method, silicon in powder form is mixed in a dispersion of acrylic latex, and silicon nitride or alumino-silicate fibers are added to the mixture. The mixture is dried and formed into a powder which is then pressed into a strip and then heated and sintered under a nitrogen-containing atmosphere.
Such a method wets the fibers poorly, which results in reduced cohesion in the final structure. The resulting structures are difficult to stick to one another, and they require large quantities of water to be vaporized. The method is relatively lengthy and costly in energy.
Preferred implementations of the present invention provide a method of manufacturing a composite fiber-reinforced ceramics structure having a high degree of cohesion, which method is simple fast and cheap in energy terms, and furthermore is suitable for obtaining composite parts of complex shape without subjecting the fibers to large mechanical forces during the initial forming of the complex shape.